'Enough': Tuskegee Councilman Johnny Ford takes saw to Confederate monument in town square

Before Johnny Ford drove into downtown Tuskegee and climbed into an electronic lift bucket with a saw on Wednesday, he prayed.

When the saw touched the concrete ankle of the towering Confederate soldier statue perched over the town square, he remembered.

Ford remembered his childhood friend, Sammy Younge, a Black Navy veteran and civil rights worker gunned down in 1966 after asking to use a whites-only bathroom. Ford remembered Tuskegee University students streaming into town streets when Younge's accused killer was acquitted, attaching chains and ropes to the towering monument to the Confederacy in a failed effort to pull it from its pedestal.

"I pledged then to remove the statue," Ford said.

On Wednesday, Ford attempted to fulfill his pledge to remove the "painful" Confederate memorial from the heart of his hometown. In the early afternoon, Ford and another, unidentified person began sawing at the leg of the downtown statue.

"I was doing it for Sammy Younge. And the students who tried to pull the statue down," Ford said. " ... The message has been sent. Everybody has just been waiting on someone to do it. It's my council district. It's my responsibility to do it. The people elected me, in this district. This is the first time the county and city government have taken a position to see it removed. Of course, they haven't been able to do it because of the legal [implications]. They're afraid of the threats from the Legislature and the attorney general. But I'm not afraid of the governor and the attorney general."

Ford said the two stopped sawing at the request of Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson, who got wind of the attempt Wednesday afternoon and came to the square.

"Looks like he had a chop saw or something. I told him he wasn't going to destroy the statue, not knowing he'd already chopped through one ankle," Brunson said. "... He said he was doing it for whatever reason, and I told him he's not going to destroy it. He was talking about what it stands for, and I told him I'm not going to allow you to commit a crime in front of me."

Ford said he moved to physically remove the statue from its platform, not damage it, after his council district constituents voted in a public meeting last week to take action.

Ford said the town had attempted to relocate the contentious monument to a Confederate cemetery in the past, but the plan fell through. Last year, the county commission said it was researching options to legally remove the monument, but Ford said people were tired of waiting.

"No one has taken any action over the last year, and the citizens in my district have said enough," Ford said. "We want to promote downtown, historical Tuskegee, and we don't want a Confederate statue in our midst."

Brunson said Ford and others could face multiple charges, including destruction of property. Ford could also face civil penalties under Alabama's 2017 Monument Preservation Act, which prohibits a local government from legally removing a monument 40 years old or older. Cities that do so face fines up to $25,000.

"I welcome that. Sometimes you have to get into good trouble in order to bring about change," Ford said, referencing a familiar refrain from the late civil rights leader John Lewis. "During the '60s, we were fighting for voting rights and we went to jail. We did what we had to do. This issue is very, very serious with me. This statue represents slavery. It stands for the Confederacy, whose fight was to keep slavery. My forefathers were enslaved. I take that very, very seriously."

The United Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated Tuskegee's monument in 1909. The monument was erected in a downtown park set aside exclusively for white people despite the population of Macon County being more than 80% Black at the time, according to the Associated Press.

The small, rural town plays a large role in Alabama history. It is the birthplace or chosen hometown of many prominent Black Americans, including Rosa Parks and Booker T. Washington, as well as home to Tuskegee University. The first Black American military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen, trained in Tuskegee during World War II.

On Wednesday, Ford pointed to Parks, Washington and a number of other prominent historical figures as appropriate subjects to replace the Confederate soldier in the future.

"There's no place for a Confederate statue to reign in our town square," Ford said.

A national reckoning on institutional racism, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, led to a renewed conversation about Confederate monuments, constructed to glorify a rebel government built on white supremacy.

Birmingham removed a 1905 monument in Linn Park in June 2020, and paid a $25,000 fine. Madison and Lowndes counties have also removed Confederate monuments over the past year.

Ford said when he was first elected to office in 1972 he attempted to have the monument relocated. He made a similar attempt in 2015 but was again unsuccessful.

In the years since, the monument has been vandalized multiple times with spray paint. At some point last year, a tarp was fashioned together to cover the monument.

Ford denounced the defacement on Wednesday and said he worked to cover the statue with a tarp last summer.

"We did not set out to damage the statue. We set out to take the statue down," Ford said.

Before Brunson arrived, they planned to remove the the statue at its feet, bury it on public land and place a headstone to identify its location, Ford said.

"The statue is literally on its last leg in Macon County," Ford said.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown at 334-240-0132 or mabrown@gannett.com.

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